Centre and Periphery

Since 2000, the Internationale Bauausstellung (i.e. international construction exhibition) IBA Fürst-Pückler-Land has been guiding the reshaping of the Lausitz region after the end of the mining economy and promoting new uses for old monuments of the industrial age.

The Lausitz region (Lusatia) was the coal and energy centre of the German Democratic Republic. Millions of tons of brown coal were mined and processed in this area of East Germany. When 17 strip mines were closed at the beginning of the nineties, the jobs disappeared, too. What remained were gigantic crater landscapes and unused industrial buildings. With the IBA Finale 2010, the process that has been set in motion will by no means be over. The reinvention of the Lausitz is taking place under the banner of tourism and cultural development and marketing.

The flooding of the former brown coal pits on the state boundary between Saxony and Brandenburg is giving rise to a landscape of lakes and ponds, which, with its total of 14,000 hectares of water surface is larger than Lake Starnberg and Lake Chiem together. Of this, 7000 hectares are connected by navigable canals. The process of flooding with river water is being carried out by the federally-owned redevelopment company Lausitz and Central-German Mining Administration Company (Lausitzer und Mitteldeutsche Bergbau-Verwaltungsgesellschaft – LMBV), and is to be completed by 2015 (no later than 2020). Then, 23 new lakes will draw visitors. Or new residents, for that matter, since the IBA, together with the LMBV and the Lausitz University of Applied Sciences (Fachhochschule Lausitz), has also made a name for itself as a „Competence Centre for Floating Architecture.“

Floating Architecture

This initiative, started in 2006, has set itself an ambitious goal: in the coming years the region is to position itself as a centre for the development and export of floating architecture. It all sounds very visionary, making floating houses the hallmark of the Lausitz lakescape. But start-ups are already in progress. In summer 2006, the first floating holiday home was opened on Lake Partwitz and a floating diving school on Lake Gräbendorf. In July 2009, a model house by the company Steeltec 37 was opened to visitors on lake Geierswald– the investor Thomas Wilde is planning a floating residential harbour with 20 houses at this location, to be completed in 2011. The new is stil emerging and the old is gone forever. On Europe’s largest landscaping construction site, visitors can directly experience how the canyons of the decommissioned coal mines are changing into a lakescape, centimetre by centimetre.

A trip to Mars

The IBA offers various tours of these transitional landscapes. An example – in Großräschen, where the IBA headquarters and the visitors’ centre are located on the rim of the former Meuro strip mine, a “trip to Mars” is being started, a walking tour of the bottom of the future Lake Ilse. And visitors can take a Jeep safari to explore the still-active strip mine in Welzow-Süd with its gigantic mining machinery and bizarre desert scenery.

Coal mining in the Lausitz has a tradition going back 150 years. Many historic monuments of steel and stone have disappeared in the meantime. A few giant industrial buildings could nonetheless be saved with the aid of the IBA and its project partners, among them Europe’s oldest brown coal power plant in Plessa, the Biotürme, a decommissioned organic treatment plant for phenolic waste water produced by the large coal-firing plant in Lauchhammer, and the overburden conveyor bridge F60 in Lichterfeld, to the west of Großraschen. A prime example of a successful IBA project, the F60 demonstrates that industrial monuments of times past can also serve as guideposts for the region’s future.

Guideposts for the future

The F60, one of the world’s largest movable machines, was used in the Klettwitz-Nord strip mine and – as the „miners’ gofer“ – transported mining waste directly into the open coal seam. After the closing of the colliery in 1992, this 11,000-tonne, 500-metre long steel giant was now superfluous, and like so many other strip-mining machines, was slated for detonation. But then, the township of Lichterfeld-Schacksdorf envisioned transforming the F60 into a public exhibit mine, and with support from the IBA, their dream has become a reality. This masterpiece of engineering, that looks as though someone has transplanted the Eiffel Tower from Paris to the Lausitz, is now a regional landmark and tourist attraction. About 70,000 visitors a year climb the monument on foot, to explore the dimensions of this steel giant and the expanse of the landscape. The F60 is a venue for concerts and other events, and even turns into a work of art at night. A light-and-sound installation by Hans Peter Kuhn enhances the contours of the overburden conveyor bridge with a „cross-hatching“ of light, and enlivens the colossal structure with the sound of various kinds of work-related noise through loudspeakers.

2010, the IBA’s Finale, is coming soon, but the redesigning of the post-mining landscape is by no means finished. The coming years will show whether the total of 25 projects that the IBA has guided and promoted will develop cost-effective structures. Only in this way will they be able to continue shaping the future of the Lausitz in a self-sustaining way.